3 Blood Lines (33 page)

“Natalie’s my friend,” Lambert purred. “Aren’t you, Natalie?”

Natalie nodded slowly, the comers of her mouth twisting up in what Vicki assumed was a smile.

“Natalie’s very strong. Aren’t you, Natalie?”

Natalie nodded again.

“Why don’t you show our new roommate how strong you are, Natalie. Pick her up.”

Enormous hands closed around Vicki’s upper arms with a grip that painfully compacted muscle down onto bone. Her shoulders rose first, but the rest of her body soon followed until her feet were six inches off the floor.

“Very good, Natalie. Now, shake her.”

After the first few seconds, it seemed as though Vicki’s brain had broken free of its moorings and was slamming around independently inside her skull.

“Drop her, Natalie.”

The floor seemed much farther away than she knew it was. Her knees cracked painfully hard against the concrete and she fell forward, just barely managing to get an arm between her face and the floor. If she’d had anything in her stomach, she’d have lost it.

“You puking down there?” Lambert inquired, squatting down and grabbing Vicki’s hair. “You puke in my cell and you lick it up.”

“Uck uf.” Her voice still wasn’t clear, but she figured Lambert got the point when her fist twisted around, nearly removing the handful of hair.

“Once that drug wears off, you’ll be out of here next time the shrink’s by. That’ll be Wednesday at the earliest. You and me and Natalie, we’re gonna have a fun two days.”

 

But lying there, listening to Natalie’s moist breathing, Vicki wondered if she could. It wasn’t the physical abuse—if that got too bad, the guards would intervene, even for a skinbeef, and by morning she should be in better shape to defend herself—it was the sheer hopelessness of the situation. She’d been swept up and slotted neatly into the system and the system didn’t like to admit it had made a mistake. The shrink would get her out of Special Needs, but that would only land her in another cell just like this one in another part of the jail. From there she could talk all she wanted, but her court date would never come up and like Lambert said,
“Who the hell’s gonna believe you? A cop gone bad; a juvie skinbeef, a doper. In here,
I’ve
got more credibility.”

It was almost as if she’d been dropped into her worst nightmare.

And what about Henry and Celluci? Had Henry betrayed her? Had Celluci been taken? Not knowing made everything worse.

Her eyes filled with moisture and she angrily blinked them dry. Then she frowned. Refracted in a tear, she seemed to see two tiny pinpoints of glowing red light. That was impossible. She couldn’t see anything.

Although the cells went no darker than a gray and shadowed twilight, lights out for Vicki had meant the end of what little sight she had without her glasses. Lambert had quickly recognized the handicap and set about taking full advantage of it. Surprisingly enough, when there was no longer any point in struggling to see, Vicki found things a little easier. Sound and smell, and the movement of air currents against her skin were a lot more useful than her deteriorating vision had been although, unfortunately, not useful enough to avoid the constant attacks. Natalie could have played the game all night, but Lambert had soon gotten bored and ordered the larger woman to bed.

Natalie liked hurting people—her strength was the only power she had—and Lambert liked seeing people hurt. Vicki sighed silently.
How nice for them that they’ve found each other.

She knew she needed sleep, but she didn’t think she’d be able to find it; she ached in too many places, supper had congealed into a solid lump just under her ribs, the mattress seemed to be deliberately digging into her shoulders and hips, and the smell of the place coated the inside of her nose and mouth, making it hard to breathe. Mostly she didn’t think she could sleep because despair kept chasing its tail around and around in her head.

Finally exhaustion claimed her and she drifted off to the sound of plastic against concrete as two cells down a woman struggled against padded shackles and banged the hockey helmet she wore over and over against the wall.

Henry’s fingers tightened where they rested against the concrete light standard and under the pressure the concrete began to crumble.

“Hey, buddy, can you spare a . . .”

Who dared? He turned.

“Holy Mary, Mother of God.” Under stubble and dirt, the drunk paled. His nightmares often wore that expression. One filthy arm raised to cover his eyes, he staggered away, muttering, “Forget it, man. Forget me.”

He was already forgotten.

Henry had no time to spare on thoughts of mortals. He wanted Tawfik.

 

He could feel the Nightwalker’s anger. The brilliance of his ka was aflame with it.

He stood at the window and stared down at the street. Although the angle of the hotel cut through his line of sight, he knew exactly where young Richmond waited. His passion thrust his ka forward with such force that Tawfik barely had to reach out to touch it. Surface thoughts were still all that were open to him, but those thoughts boiled with enough raw emotion that, for tonight, the surface was entertaining enough.

“Such a small city this turns out to be,” he murmured, lightly touching the glass. “So you know my lord’s plaything
and
the police officer who sent her to find me—who appears to be giving my hunting dogs a good run.” Tawfik suddenly remembered the doors he had been maneuvered past on his walk through the chosen one’s mind and he smiled. Two of the doors had just given up their secrets. How noble that she had tried to protect those close to her. “I imagine all these little interconnections have twisted her up far worse than I ever could. My lord must be pleased.” If his lord even noticed; very often subtleties were ignored in favor of blind gorging. Tawfik sighed. He had realized long, long ago that he had sworn himself to a god without grandeur.

“You can rant and rave all you like, Nightwalker. I am not going down there. You’re not thinking right now, you’re only reacting. Thoughts can be twisted. Reactions, especially from one with your physical power, should be avoided.”

The Nightwalker, he was amused to note, had not grown beyond the possibility of love. How foolish, to love those who were fed upon. Like a mortal declaring himself for a cow or a chicken . . .

He took one last look at the burning, brilliant ka that he so desired and then closed his mind to it, removing temptation. “We’ll straighten things out later,” he promised softly. “We have the time, you and I.”

 

“Graham. What?”

“Any word on Vicki?”

Dave Graham raised himself up on his elbow and peered at the illuminated numbers of the clock. “Jesus Christ, Mike,” he hissed, “it’s two o’clock in the fucking morning. Can’t it wait?”

“What about Vicki?”

Curling around the receiver so as not to wake his wife, Dave surrendered. “There’s no warrant in the system. No one’s got orders to pick her up. They’re keeping an eye on her place, but they’re watching for you.”

“Then they’ve already got her.”

“They who? Cantree?”

“That’s who he seems to be using.”

“He?”

“Never mind.”

Dave sighed. “Look, maybe she’s got nothing to do with this. Maybe she just went to Kingston to visit her mother.”

“We were working on the same case.”

“A police case?” Dave took the long silence that followed his question as an answer and sighed again. “Mike, Vicki’s not on the force anymore. You’re not supposed to do that.”

“Have you talked to Cantree?”

“Yeah, right after I talked to you this morning.”

“And?”

“And like I said in my message, nothing’s changed. He still wants you. I don’t know why. He said it had something to do with internal security, that I wasn’t to ask questions, and all would be made clear later on. He’s got me doing scut work out in Rexdale.”

“Did he seem strange?”

“Fuck, Mike, this whole thing is strange. Maybe you should just come in and straighten it out. Cantree’ll listen.”

The bark of laughter held little humor. “The only hope the whole city, maybe the whole world has is that I don’t get picked up and I don’t go anywhere near Frank Cantree.”

“Right.” It was two o’clock in the morning; he had no intention of getting into conspiracy theories. “I’ll keep ears and eyes open, but there’s not much I can do.”

“Anything you see or hear . . .”

“I’ll leave a message. Not that I’m likely to see or hear anything out west of God’s country, I mean, we’re talking Rexdale here. You’d better get going in case they’ve got a trace on this call . . . Mike? I was joking. Celluci? Christ . . .” He stared down at the receiver for a moment, then shook his head, hung up and wrapped himself around the soft, warm curves of his wife.

“Who was that?” she murmured.

“Celluci.”

“What time is it?”

“Just after two.”

“Oh, God . . .” She burrowed deeper under the covers. “They catch him yet?”

“Not yet.”

“pity.”

 

By breakfast, Vicki had regained most of her muscle control; arms and legs moved when and where she wanted them to although the fine-tuning still needed work. Attempting to use her fingers for more than basic gripping of utensils was chancy and stringing more than two or three words together tied her tongue in knots. Thinking beyond her present situation, trying to analyze or plan, continued to wrap her brain in cotton, and thinking
about
her present situation did no good at all.

Without her glasses, breakfast was a heap of yellow and brown at the end of a fuzzy tunnel. It tasted pretty much exactly the way it looked.

She couldn’t avoid eating sandwiched between her two cell mates, nor could she miss noticing how the other women on the range steered well clear of them, allowing them to move to the front of the food line as well as claim an entire pitcher of coffee. Natalie’s strength combined with Lambert’s viciousness placed them firmly on the top of the pecking order. The more coherent of the other inmates regarded Vicki with something close to relief, their expressions proclaiming not so much
better you than me as at least when it’s you it isn’t me.

Protecting her food as well as herself turned out to be more than Vicki was capable of. Egged on by Lambert, Natalie lifted most of Vicki’s breakfast and, under the cover of the rickety picnic table—that tilted alarmingly under every shift in weight—pinched her thigh black and blue. Natalie thought the whole thing was pretty funny. Vicki didn’t, but the attacks came in from the side and she couldn’t fight what she couldn’t see. The meal became a painful and humiliating lesson in helplessness.

Locked back in the cell during cleanup, she kept her back against the wall and tried to force her eyes to function. Unfortunately, it didn’t take Lambert long to map the limits of her vision. Trying to duck away from the wet end of a towel dipped in the toilet, Vicki felt a sudden kinship with those kids in school yards whom everyone picked on just because they could.

When they were let back out into the range, she groped her way past the row of tables and tried to talk to the guard. She knew where the duty desk should be even though she couldn’t actually see it.

“Hey?”

“Hey what?” The guard’s voice offered nothing.

“I ne . . .”

“No. No! NO! NO!NO!NO! NOOOOOO!”

Natalie. Standing right behind her. Although she knew what the result would be, Vicki tried again. “You go . . .”

“NO!NO!NO! NOOOOOO!”

She didn’t think of this on her own. Lambert put her up to it
. Teeth clenched so tightly her jaw ached, Vicki was willing to bet that the noise would go on indefinitely.

“Look!” she finally screamed, as she shoved impotently at the woman bellowing a hundred and twenty decibel accompaniment to everything she said. “I don’ belon’ he’!”

All at once iron rods slammed up against Vicki’s face as Natalie shoved her, and for an instant the guard loomed into focus. It wasn’t Dickson. It wasn’t anyone Vicki knew.

“So tell the shrink,” she suggested. Her expression teetered between boredom and annoyance. “And back away from those bars.”

“Mine for two days,” Lambert told her as Natalie led Vicki back to her side.

They spent the morning watching game shows. Vicki sat in a kind of stupor, thankful, given what she could hear over the noise of forty women in an area designed for eighteen, that she couldn’t see the televisions. Middle America rejoicing in the glory of frost free refrigerators would’ve pushed her over the edge.